In a phrase that might serve as New Albany's official civic motto, no one really wants to talk about it, but a few weeks back, when Dr. Gilderbloom's most recent streets research project started being picked up by national media, Irv Stumler apparently visited the University of Louisville to demand that Gilderbloom be silenced, because how dare peer-reviewed academic research be allowed to deny the sanctity of New Albany's 18-wheeled Luddite exceptionalism?
Depending on the report, Stumler either was laughed off campus or curtly told that if he didn't take a chill pill, he would be forcibly removed.
This episode occurred around the same time that Stumler, a self-anointed civic pillar of propriety, was lurching from door to door downtown, foaming at the mouth, spinning colossal untruths about the dastardly effects of two-way (complete) streets and traffic calming.
By this point, he'd already been at it for a while.
Now that the erstwhile Republican and current Democratic mayoral candidate David White has crawled into bed with the likes of Stumler, who four years ago when smitten with Doug England just couldn't recall which way he swings
politically, we're asked to come on out and celebrate the virtues of municipal value extraction, with a diesel fuel chaser.
And Gilderbloom? He's still at it, apparently enjoying the luxury of dealing with facts, as opposed to reflex bile emissions. Keep reading to learn who is even less enamored of Gilderbloom than Stumler.
U of L professor John Gilderbloom gains national notice for one-way street research, by David Serchuk (Insider Louisville)
University of Louisville professor John Gilderbloom has just seen his national profile rise dramatically via a story about him and his research in The Washington Post.
The story — titled “Why one-way streets are bad for everyone but speeding cars” — highlights research conducted by Gilderbloom, the director of the U of L’s Center for Sustainable Urban Neighborhoods, and William Riggs, an assistant professor from the California Polytechnic State University. Their research centers around the thesis that two-way streets in residential neighborhoods are safer, boost housing values, and are less prone to crime than one-way streets.
Cutting all the way to the chase ...
Gilderbloom tells Insider Louisville that Mayor Greg Fischer has given him the cold shoulder when it comes to his research. He says he’s invited the mayor to speak to his graduate students in urban and public affairs at U of L — as former Mayors Jerry Abramson and David Armstrong did — and was told by the mayor’s office that Fischer wasn’t available.
“He won’t speak to me,” Gilderbloom says, “nor will several top officials there.” He claims it’s because his research runs counter to Fischer’s growth-focused ideology.
